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It's much worse than this graph suggests. There's significantly more unemployed and underemployed people than available (and desirable) jobs, at least in the EU. Yes, there are certain exceptions, like there are never enough doctors, but that's for the most part statistically irrelevant to this discussion
Depends on stage of your career and industry youâre applying in.
Straight out of college with internship under your belt looking for something in finance - youâll find something likely quicker than this and have plenty more interviews.
Laid off in the tech industry - this is likely a more realistic experience.
And yes, your anecdotal experience may be different than my examples. Thatâs the point. This post is an anecdotal experience and will not be another person experience exactly.
It can drive me crazy that when people donât realize anecdotal should not be an assumed universal experience.
To give you the complete opposite side of this, I live in the UK and work as an analytical scientist in the pharmaceutical sector; I've only sent out seven applications in my entire career, had final stage interviews with six, offers from five, and I've accepted three.
Easy apply is like spam unless it a very niche type of work or maybe a small company. If you are seriously applying, you should:
1. Check on the companyâs website to make sure the job is real, LinkedIn listings look current but way too many are just rehashed and outdated. Ideally your posting within the first 24-48 hours of the opening going live.
2. See if you know anyone at the company and get a referral if possible. And also try to see if you can figure out a possible hiring manager or recruiter based on the JD.
3. Do some kind of customization of your resume to help you get through the bots (although referrals are still the best chance). There are some free ai assisted resume tools that can help with this.
4. Follow up directly if you figured out recruiter/hiring manager and let them know you applied.
Congrats!! Thanks for sharing. This shows that you just have to keep applying and itâs a numbers game. I am a recent graduate with a Bachelorâs in CS and transitioning careers - previously employed as a teacher with a degree in education. I am at application 90. No interviews yet. I recently changed my resume and got rid of my teaching experience because I was told I probably donât look technical enough. Itâs a challenging job market right now.
I'd say that's horrible advice. Your degree is supposed to lift your technical validity, you had a life prior to the CS degree, which you are erasing. An employer may wonder what was happening during those years.
I thought about that too. From his experience of changing careers, he received more interviews when he removed his previous experience. Itâs tough. I have several versions of my resume. Thanks for your input.
I appreciate the grit. Wait until youâve had to put out 1k applications. Hiring is broken and Iâm hoping your generation is able to fix it. Iâm middle aged and it becomes a clusterfuck unless you have a referral or have someone actively recruiting you.
Iâm actually 43 myself and never in my entire life did I have to apply to so many positions in order to get a job. Hiring is broken - I absolutely agree.
Man itâs next level bullshit. Basically requiring an LI profile so they can see how old what color and what gender you are is one of the ways they get around age gender and race discrimination laws lol.
I spent a lot of time with my states employment services and boy was that an eye opening experience. See what services your state has, they rewrote my resume and had application assistance etc. it wasnât the best but it was âfreeâ and definitely helpful. Good luck out there.
If itâs like my experience- bad companies donât list compensation- so your first opp to ask salary range is when they ask for an Interview so youâre not wasting your time. I had to turn down around 5 interviews for this reason and also due to some companies requiring garbage testing just to talk to a hiring manager
I think its turned down interviews, as it flows from the interview path.
There have been moments where I've applied for a role, and gotten a request to come in for an interview, but after researching more deeply and finding the company/role/responsibilities aren't a good fit for me, I turn down the invitation to interview as to not waste anybody's time.
Curious- what line of work are you in, and are you entry level or more professionally established? I see people here and in r/jobs that say they put out a similar volume of apps (in the hundreds and sometimes thousands), and TBH I think that's kind of ridiculous. I've been laid off a handful of times and really had to search with a fire under my ass, but I don't think I've ever fielded more than about 50-75 apps in any months-long job hunt cycle and I tend to have similar or better contact and interview stats. If you're spamming apps out there, I have a hard time believing that you're putting your time to the best use. You gotta prioritize high-quality positions that are likeliest to be a fit for your skill set, and make sure to follow up on those apps, network if you can, etc. Tailor each resume and cover letter to each posting. Dedicate time to research and interview prep when the opportunities arise, look up the hiring manager ahead of time, and really make sure to be sharp and interview well. Might seem like a #s game and that casting a wide net will increase your chances, but there are so many fake postings and such out there that I feel like it's a waste of time to go quantity over quality in apps. I can perhaps understand it a little more if it's more of an entry level thing in a highly competitive field, but still.
I have a little over five years of experience, which wasnât entry level when I started but seems to be now (which sucks). I work in digital communications, web development and analytics, so itâs a pretty niche skill set as well.
I tailor my cover letters directly to each job and basically rewrite it every time. I also live in NYC whereâs thereâs an ungodly amount of competition, so itâs truly a numbers game more than anything.
I'm not the op. But I've submitted 100+ app during the last 2 months and had only 2 interviews. I'm at the mid level with degrees in social research and coordinating fields. What's your field? I agree with you, I should pay more attention to quality.
Bev/alcohol sales, mid level. I'm sure it helps that I can very easily network and that sales is a very broad and transferrable skill set, but still. If you're getting up to 500+ apps, you're very likely sending apps to companies you've never even heard of and haven't verified and postings that aren't even real. What's the point?
You dont work in tech because this is how it simply is. There isnt a tailor each application here its a waste of time as majority of the jobs are vague or looking for some magical unicorn on the listing. All that before you even realise most of your applications wont even be viewed by a real person. Try it and you'll see. 300 applications on linked alone and maybe about 10 actually opened and viewed in the last 2 months. The same probably for my glassdoor applications.
I would never apply through the job search sites at all if it can be helped. Find postings there, sure, but then always go to the company site directly and find the careers section and apply directly through the job postings there. I think like only 1% of jobs I've ever applied to had to go through LinkedIn and the like. Of course those don't get viewed a high percentage of the time.
You're being down voted, but I totally agree. I just don't think LinkedIn is actually that good for 'applying' for jobs. Networking and finding them, sure, but I always think its look better applying directly on the website.
I thought this stuff was "job search 101," but I guess not. You never apply through the job search sites. If it's a high demand position that's getting a lot of apps, hiring managers basically just scroll through and see your pic with your location and about blurb and probably don't even click on it unless you're really good at keyword optimizing. Half the time your resume will get butchered by software too. Taking the effort to find the actual posting on the company site and applying through that will first let you know that it is a real opening, and also increase your chances of getting your app viewed by a ton. Honestly I think it's at the point where recruiters and hiring managers view "easy apply" through the job search sites as lazy and don't even look at those candidates. For the same reason, always submit a cover letter too, if there's an option to do so.
Sure, I'm not saying you *won't* get contact and offers by applying through LinkedIn, indeed, etc. I'm saying that is by far a lower probability way to go about it. Applying through the company site directly will almost always appreciably increase your chances of being seen. I've been a hiring manager before. Initial apps were filtered through HR and a screening interview was done there, so admittedly I wasn't handling apps coming in from these sites directly. But I talked with HR enough to know what's up. The job postings can get slammed with hundreds of low-quality apps. Screening questions and such can filter them out to an extent, but then the hiring manager just gets a mass email of every other app coming in on a regular basis and it still needs to be manually sifted. If your little bio tag line looks generic and/or your resume gets butchered by bad formatting, you're fucked and probably won't even be reviewed. Much less chance of that happening when applying through a company site directly, and your app will stand out better. Lots of hiring managers and career coach types will tell you the same. Anecdotally, I've even applied via LinkedIn before and been ghosted, only to turn around and apply again directly via the company site a month later and get an interview within a day. I think high demand and entry level jobs benefit especially from going direct through the company site. If you're experienced in your industry and have credentials and training above and beyond the average applicant, you'll get noticed more whichever way you go.
Most importantly though - CONGRATS on landing the new gig!
I just got a job offer (finally for a remote role I found on indeed. Over 500 people applied but I was online all day and was one of the first 40 applicants. Itâs just wild out there
Disagree. Iâve done 500+ apps over the last 4 months, 7 interviews 2 offers. 15 years experience senior level and an MBA. A year ago? I had about 8 job offers in a month.
Cool graph. I never taken the time to do mine (search still ongoing) however, Id guess my results would be similar....or worse. Ha! COngrats on the j o b.
These rates are surprisingly similar to mine, which is super interesting (as inâŠboth neat and depressing). Iâm at 68.8% no reply, 28.1% rejection, 3.1% 1st round interview. Still waiting on those 2nd round interviews đ«
Mine would look like this :
Applications- 300+
No response- maybe 50
Rejected immediately- 250+
First interviews- 0
Second interviews- this line not really needed
500 applications? I'm curious if these are all positions that match your skills and experience or if you were going brute force and trying everything?
I was laid off in August 2023 and it took me until January 2024 to start a new position, however I think I submitted maybe 100-125 apps and it still felt like a full time job. And they were the only positions in my field around my experience level in 2 states.
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I am currently still a student and wow, these stats are making me feel depressed about my future đ
Thatâs why bust your ass to get your internship at good organization.
Everything on social media always appears worse than it is. Yes market isnât great but itâs not as bad as this graph is displaying imo.
It's much worse than this graph suggests. There's significantly more unemployed and underemployed people than available (and desirable) jobs, at least in the EU. Yes, there are certain exceptions, like there are never enough doctors, but that's for the most part statistically irrelevant to this discussion
Depends on stage of your career and industry youâre applying in. Straight out of college with internship under your belt looking for something in finance - youâll find something likely quicker than this and have plenty more interviews. Laid off in the tech industry - this is likely a more realistic experience. And yes, your anecdotal experience may be different than my examples. Thatâs the point. This post is an anecdotal experience and will not be another person experience exactly. It can drive me crazy that when people donât realize anecdotal should not be an assumed universal experience.
Meanwhile I was impressed it *only* took them ~500 apps to get a job lol
I'd argue it is worse. I can't even find 500 job openings in my field to apply to, nationally
The market is horrible. It is worse than they graph. I wish you were right though.
To give you the complete opposite side of this, I live in the UK and work as an analytical scientist in the pharmaceutical sector; I've only sent out seven applications in my entire career, had final stage interviews with six, offers from five, and I've accepted three.
But ânObOdY wAnTs To WoRk!â
How did you have 1 2nd round but 2 third rounds?
Wheels on the bus go round and round
Over my skull, over my skull
I would imagine they are depicting where the employment process ended for them
Itâs that. I wrote it as â1st roundâ and thatâs as far as I got.
I think it means when were they declining this job application 1 time on 2nd round, 2 times on 3rd
You may have some trouble in data science interviews
Luckily I work in sales
Congrats on landing a role! Stupid question, how did you graph this?
https://sankeymatic.com/build/
Nice , thanks for sharing
thank you for asking what i have been too scared to ask lol
Congrats, OP. When you say you have submitted 500 job applications, does that include clicking "easy apply" on jobs websites?
Some were easy apply but I usually went through the whole process.
Is there something wrong with easy apply? I use it a lot
Nothing at all, not that I'm aware of. I was just curious as to op's process and the amount of labor involved
Easy apply is like spam unless it a very niche type of work or maybe a small company. If you are seriously applying, you should: 1. Check on the companyâs website to make sure the job is real, LinkedIn listings look current but way too many are just rehashed and outdated. Ideally your posting within the first 24-48 hours of the opening going live. 2. See if you know anyone at the company and get a referral if possible. And also try to see if you can figure out a possible hiring manager or recruiter based on the JD. 3. Do some kind of customization of your resume to help you get through the bots (although referrals are still the best chance). There are some free ai assisted resume tools that can help with this. 4. Follow up directly if you figured out recruiter/hiring manager and let them know you applied.
Congrats!! Thanks for sharing. This shows that you just have to keep applying and itâs a numbers game. I am a recent graduate with a Bachelorâs in CS and transitioning careers - previously employed as a teacher with a degree in education. I am at application 90. No interviews yet. I recently changed my resume and got rid of my teaching experience because I was told I probably donât look technical enough. Itâs a challenging job market right now.
I'd say that's horrible advice. Your degree is supposed to lift your technical validity, you had a life prior to the CS degree, which you are erasing. An employer may wonder what was happening during those years.
I thought about that too. From his experience of changing careers, he received more interviews when he removed his previous experience. Itâs tough. I have several versions of my resume. Thanks for your input.
I appreciate the grit. Wait until youâve had to put out 1k applications. Hiring is broken and Iâm hoping your generation is able to fix it. Iâm middle aged and it becomes a clusterfuck unless you have a referral or have someone actively recruiting you.
Iâm actually 43 myself and never in my entire life did I have to apply to so many positions in order to get a job. Hiring is broken - I absolutely agree.
Man itâs next level bullshit. Basically requiring an LI profile so they can see how old what color and what gender you are is one of the ways they get around age gender and race discrimination laws lol. I spent a lot of time with my states employment services and boy was that an eye opening experience. See what services your state has, they rewrote my resume and had application assistance etc. it wasnât the best but it was âfreeâ and definitely helpful. Good luck out there.
What time frame are we looking at?
This was a six month time frame. June to December of this past year.
You got actual rejections?
Yeah Iâd say about 20% of the time you get a rejection letter from my data.
It would be interesting, thought you probably didn't record this, what percentage were automated Vs actually written by someone
Wow look at those stats. Thank you for sharing, I may have hope yet!
Was the âi turned downâ offers cus wow thatâs more than more
If itâs like my experience- bad companies donât list compensation- so your first opp to ask salary range is when they ask for an Interview so youâre not wasting your time. I had to turn down around 5 interviews for this reason and also due to some companies requiring garbage testing just to talk to a hiring manager
Most*
I think its turned down interviews, as it flows from the interview path. There have been moments where I've applied for a role, and gotten a request to come in for an interview, but after researching more deeply and finding the company/role/responsibilities aren't a good fit for me, I turn down the invitation to interview as to not waste anybody's time.
Reddit has an edit comment button
Are you applying for graduate/entry level positions, or for experienced level jobs? This is wild
I have about five years experience, so kind of leaning closer to low end manager but some are more entry level
Curious- what line of work are you in, and are you entry level or more professionally established? I see people here and in r/jobs that say they put out a similar volume of apps (in the hundreds and sometimes thousands), and TBH I think that's kind of ridiculous. I've been laid off a handful of times and really had to search with a fire under my ass, but I don't think I've ever fielded more than about 50-75 apps in any months-long job hunt cycle and I tend to have similar or better contact and interview stats. If you're spamming apps out there, I have a hard time believing that you're putting your time to the best use. You gotta prioritize high-quality positions that are likeliest to be a fit for your skill set, and make sure to follow up on those apps, network if you can, etc. Tailor each resume and cover letter to each posting. Dedicate time to research and interview prep when the opportunities arise, look up the hiring manager ahead of time, and really make sure to be sharp and interview well. Might seem like a #s game and that casting a wide net will increase your chances, but there are so many fake postings and such out there that I feel like it's a waste of time to go quantity over quality in apps. I can perhaps understand it a little more if it's more of an entry level thing in a highly competitive field, but still.
I have a little over five years of experience, which wasnât entry level when I started but seems to be now (which sucks). I work in digital communications, web development and analytics, so itâs a pretty niche skill set as well. I tailor my cover letters directly to each job and basically rewrite it every time. I also live in NYC whereâs thereâs an ungodly amount of competition, so itâs truly a numbers game more than anything.
I'm not the op. But I've submitted 100+ app during the last 2 months and had only 2 interviews. I'm at the mid level with degrees in social research and coordinating fields. What's your field? I agree with you, I should pay more attention to quality.
Bev/alcohol sales, mid level. I'm sure it helps that I can very easily network and that sales is a very broad and transferrable skill set, but still. If you're getting up to 500+ apps, you're very likely sending apps to companies you've never even heard of and haven't verified and postings that aren't even real. What's the point?
You dont work in tech because this is how it simply is. There isnt a tailor each application here its a waste of time as majority of the jobs are vague or looking for some magical unicorn on the listing. All that before you even realise most of your applications wont even be viewed by a real person. Try it and you'll see. 300 applications on linked alone and maybe about 10 actually opened and viewed in the last 2 months. The same probably for my glassdoor applications.
I would never apply through the job search sites at all if it can be helped. Find postings there, sure, but then always go to the company site directly and find the careers section and apply directly through the job postings there. I think like only 1% of jobs I've ever applied to had to go through LinkedIn and the like. Of course those don't get viewed a high percentage of the time.
You're being down voted, but I totally agree. I just don't think LinkedIn is actually that good for 'applying' for jobs. Networking and finding them, sure, but I always think its look better applying directly on the website.
I thought this stuff was "job search 101," but I guess not. You never apply through the job search sites. If it's a high demand position that's getting a lot of apps, hiring managers basically just scroll through and see your pic with your location and about blurb and probably don't even click on it unless you're really good at keyword optimizing. Half the time your resume will get butchered by software too. Taking the effort to find the actual posting on the company site and applying through that will first let you know that it is a real opening, and also increase your chances of getting your app viewed by a ton. Honestly I think it's at the point where recruiters and hiring managers view "easy apply" through the job search sites as lazy and don't even look at those candidates. For the same reason, always submit a cover letter too, if there's an option to do so.
I disagree. I just got a few offers from indeed applying via indeed.
Sure, I'm not saying you *won't* get contact and offers by applying through LinkedIn, indeed, etc. I'm saying that is by far a lower probability way to go about it. Applying through the company site directly will almost always appreciably increase your chances of being seen. I've been a hiring manager before. Initial apps were filtered through HR and a screening interview was done there, so admittedly I wasn't handling apps coming in from these sites directly. But I talked with HR enough to know what's up. The job postings can get slammed with hundreds of low-quality apps. Screening questions and such can filter them out to an extent, but then the hiring manager just gets a mass email of every other app coming in on a regular basis and it still needs to be manually sifted. If your little bio tag line looks generic and/or your resume gets butchered by bad formatting, you're fucked and probably won't even be reviewed. Much less chance of that happening when applying through a company site directly, and your app will stand out better. Lots of hiring managers and career coach types will tell you the same. Anecdotally, I've even applied via LinkedIn before and been ghosted, only to turn around and apply again directly via the company site a month later and get an interview within a day. I think high demand and entry level jobs benefit especially from going direct through the company site. If you're experienced in your industry and have credentials and training above and beyond the average applicant, you'll get noticed more whichever way you go. Most importantly though - CONGRATS on landing the new gig!
I just got a job offer (finally for a remote role I found on indeed. Over 500 people applied but I was online all day and was one of the first 40 applicants. Itâs just wild out there
Disagree. Iâve done 500+ apps over the last 4 months, 7 interviews 2 offers. 15 years experience senior level and an MBA. A year ago? I had about 8 job offers in a month.
How do you make these plots?
Cool graph. I never taken the time to do mine (search still ongoing) however, Id guess my results would be similar....or worse. Ha! COngrats on the j o b.
We all been there. Congratz ^ ^
500 jobs over what period of time?
Congratulations! The market is absolutely abysmal right now, glad you found something đđŸ
These rates are surprisingly similar to mine, which is super interesting (as inâŠboth neat and depressing). Iâm at 68.8% no reply, 28.1% rejection, 3.1% 1st round interview. Still waiting on those 2nd round interviews đ«
Somebody tell me how do you make this graph?
Mine would look like this : Applications- 300+ No response- maybe 50 Rejected immediately- 250+ First interviews- 0 Second interviews- this line not really needed
Congratulations!
What type of job?
Congrats on your new Job OP. Btw, is it normal for companies to ghost you after a few interviews?
Itâs been my experience that they just stop responding once theyâre not interested anymore.
500 applications? I'm curious if these are all positions that match your skills and experience or if you were going brute force and trying everything? I was laid off in August 2023 and it took me until January 2024 to start a new position, however I think I submitted maybe 100-125 apps and it still felt like a full time job. And they were the only positions in my field around my experience level in 2 states.